Page:The Tattooed Countess (1924).pdf/56

 chopped into bits and doused with sugar and vinegar—olive oil, apparently, was not a recognized commodity in Maple Valley. She rather fancied the silver castor holding cruets, the cut-glass fingerbowls in which floated sprigs of lemon-verbena, and the flat, cut-glass dish, rectangular in shape, filled with purple pansies and maiden-hair ferns, which decorated the centre of the table. One incident, however, marred the meal for her. She upset the salt-cellar, spilling the salt. She cast a bit over her shoulder, but, nevertheless, she feared that something untoward was going to happen.

During the meal the conversation brightened somewhat. Each sister was becoming freer, less self-conscious, under the supposedly rigid scrutiny of the other. In time, each thought, it was possible that this sense of being watched would disappear. Lou was finding the greater difficulty in adjusting herself; she had discovered, almost immediately after Ella had descended the stairs, a new cause for anxiety. She did not, however, speak of this at once. It was not, indeed, until they were eating the chopped lettuce that she found courage to observe:

Ella, you've been tattooed.

Yes. As in a revery the Countess recalled the day that she had submitted to this torture, as an additional bond which bound her to Tony. Lou's remark was a reminder both pleasant and painful and its implications did not reach Ella's conscious-